Our Mission

Our Mission

The Moment Your Skin Changed. Forever.

When Dermalogica meets skin, skin health is redefined. Dermalogica is the number one choice of skin care professionals and consumers worldwide. Why? Because for over 25 years, we've been dedicated to delivering skin health results through education, innovation, and professional recommendation, not through sparkly packaging, promises of miracle cures, or overblown hype.

Education First

While the Dermalogica story begins in 1986, the force of change in the industry started in Los Angeles, circa 1983. Jane Wurwand, a tenured, United Kingdom-trained skin therapist new to the American "esthetician" industry, recognized that continuing skin and body therapy education was practically non-existent in the United States. While her training had been comprehensive and serious, US students entered the industry licensed yet under-trained, and worse, under-respected.

Jane put her education in action, opening a small classroom in Marina del Rey, California under the name The International Dermal Institute (IDI). She invited licensed skin therapists to get hands-on with the postgraduate training so critical to making them competitive in the business. Today, IDI is considered the international gold-standard for postgraduate skin and body therapy training with 37 locations worldwide.

The Making of Dermalogica

While teaching at IDI, it didn"t take long for Jane to realize no product line embraced her belief of skin health as opposed to "beauty," so she developed her own. And in 1986, Dermalogica was born. The vision was clear – a product line free of common irritants and ingredients that could cause breakouts (including lanolin, SD alcohol, mineral oil, artificial colors and fragrances) that would improve skin health, and were only available from qualified skin therapy professionals trained at The International Dermal Institute.

As a brand, Dermalogica immediately upset the prevailing paradigm of beauty and glamour by classifying skin care as a health issue as opposed to a cosmetic concern. Just as we removed common irritants from the ingredient menu, Dermalogica also introduced a powerful new element into the brand identity: the specialized expertise of the professional skin therapist.

Then, as now, all our products are manufactured in the USA, we have never taken part in animal testing, and Dermalogica is sold only where professional consultation and professional treatments are performed by professional skin therapists. Dermalogica, now in it"s 25th year has become the number one choice of skin care professionals worldwide, sold in over 80 countries and prescribed more often than any other product available.

Dermalogica is a privately owned company (meaning we are not owned by a beauty conglomerate, holding company or financiers) driven first by education and research. We take pride in being true pioneers in the industry, growing from a modest store-front in Marina del Rey to the now 145,000 square foot Corporate Headquarters in Los Angeles (and offices worldwide in over 50 countries) -- never wavering on our initial vision of skin health and the skin health professional.

Know Your Zones

Truly understanding your skin is the first step towards a lifetime of skin health. Start with a Dermalogica professional skin therapist: fortunately, with over 75,000 of them in over 50 countries, chances are you have a skin health expert just around the corner.

Armed with Dermalogica"s unique Face Mapping® skin analysis, your Dermalogica professional skin therapist will decode your skin – zone by zone – and equip you with the real advice and results-driven regimen only available from a trained professional.

We're Not Pretty.

(Or beautiful. Or pampering. Or luxury.)

We"re far too interested in guiding you to a new level of skin health fitness! So, while our packaging may not be designed to color-coordinate with your bathroom, you can always be sure that we"ve spent our time on delivering your skin the high-performance formulas it needs. Plus, we"ll never use common "beauty" ingredients like Mineral Oil, Lanolin, artificial colors and fragrances or other cheap fillers. Sure, it"s easier to formulate with them, but the bottom line is they"re just bad for your skin. Instead, we use ingredients that we know will work – our confidence founded by skin care professionals worldwide who use our products in their treatment rooms every day because they get results.

JANE D. WURWAND

Jane Wurwand is an innovative business visionary who opens doors for global women’s economic empowerment and professional development. She is the co-founder and co-owner of Dermalogica and The International Dermal Institute, which are recognized as game-changing brands within the sphere of professional skin care education. Today, Dermalogica products are the number one choice of more than 100,000 professional skin therapists in more than 80 countries worldwide.

In January, 2011, Wurwand founded FITE as part of the Dermalogica Foundation. FITE (Financial Independence Through Entrepreneurship) is a global women’s entrepreneurial initiative inspired by her three decades of work within the skin care industry where the vast majority of the ownership and work-force is female. Today, FITE works to create pathways to entrepreneurship by providing access to small loans and business resources, supporting education and leadership training, and helping amplify women’s voices around the world.

In 2011, Wurwand spoke before the United Nations (UN) as the keynote speaker regarding the FITE mission to fund 25,000 women-owned small businesses worldwide, championed by Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General for the UN, and returned to the UN in 2012 to participate on a panel that addresses “The Role of Business in Empowering Women.” Surpassing its original two-year mission in less than 18 months, FITE has assisted more than 40,000 women in gaining financial independence. In 2014, Dermalogica’s FITE Sponsorship of the UN Foundation’s work on Innovation and Entrepreneurship began. Wurwand serves as a special advisor to the UN Foundation’s Global Entrepreneurs Council, supporting their work with the UN to advance women and girls.

Since 2010, Wurwand has been a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and is part of their Women and Girls Action Committee. Her expertise was highlighted in Entrepreneur magazine’s “Trep Talk”, and in May, 2012, she was named CEO/Business Owner of the Year by the Los Angeles Business Journal, as part of the publication’s annual recognition program, Women Who Make a Difference. Wurwand is also a frequent Huffington Post blog contributor where she writes on her passion for women in business and entrepreneurship.

Wurwand is an active Luminary Member of Step Up Women’s Network, a national non-profit which offers life-changing opportunities to at-risk girls. She also lends her expertise to the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship and the National Association of Women’s Business Owners, which named Wurwand “Business Woman of the Year” in Los Angeles in 2009. Wurwand mentors graduate students and serves on the Board for the Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at The Anderson School of Business Management UCLA.

Born and raised in the United Kingdom, Wurwand travels year-round as a speaker, and lives and works in Los Angeles, where the global headquarters for their companies are located. She and her husband, Raymond are parents of two teenage daughters.